THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 
37 
plants, says : On the higher slopes great snow banks linger into 
late June, July, or even into August. Sharp freezes and skifts of 
snow usher in September. During the few, sometimes very few, 
favorable weeks, magnificent flowers, gentians and erythroniums, 
asters and erigerons, pentstemons and delphiniums, spring up and 
develop into blossom and fruit with a celerity scarcely surpassed 
by Jack's famous bean stalk. These are the descendants of an- 
cestors that for many generations have succeeded in gradually ac- 
celerating the life* activities, not into the "pace that kills," but into 
harmony with a changing environment. On our cold, arid 
plateaus we see the same conditions and the same processes and re- 
sults. The examples may be less striking, but even here the 
forms that survive have had many a sharp lesson. 
But no more striking example can be given than is exhibited in 
some of the interior deserts, the Red Desert of Wyoming, for ex- 
ample, where not the shortness of the season by the scarcity of 
water is the prime cause of the noticeable haste. In such local- 
ities the moisture that falls is principally the snows of late spring. 
These on melting furnish the water which must carry many of 
these desert forms to full fruition. The cloudless ski^^^ of June 
bring to maturity many small annuals that spring into life in cool 
but moist ^lay. ^lore numerous perennials scatter far and wide 
their abundant fruitage before July's sun bakes completely dry 
valley, hill and plain. These latter have adopted the storage plan 
as the best means of securing the requisite speed when the favor- 
able season comes. Rhizomes, bulbs, tubers and roots, often en- 
ormous, are packed full of food materials which are converted 
into immediately available funds to meet the heavy drafts that the 
rush season demands. 
There is perhaps no class of plants that have learned the art of 
hurrying so well as the generally despised weeds. A cockle-bur 
and a pig^veed rarely fail to mature some seed. Cut them off 
near the ground repeatedly during the summer, and each time 
they will put out new branches from the stump. These may in 
turn be destroyed, till as Autumn approaches you forget about 
them, but they do not forget their business. When the season 
